


Risky Business

by SeeEmRunning



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Suicide, risky business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 09:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Julia, the game was a gift from on high. To the BAU, it was a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risky Business

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quickie I wrote while rewatching 'Risky Business'. Warning for suicide (nobody on the team).

To Julia, the game was a gift from on high.

She'd heard of the two boys dying two weeks before, and the boy and the girl dead a week earlier. It was the perfect way to go through with it without it being obvious what it was. If she failed, it would be written off as teenage idiocy, and she'd get off without her parents screaming at her for being depressed or being strong-armed into drugs or talking. And with the FBI investigating - they'd talked to her school earlier - it would be written off _even faster._ It was _perfect._

She pulled up the website. She'd done this twice before. Practice runs, in a way, learning how to tie the knots in practice rather than just in theory. Both times she'd stopped before she'd passed out, unwilling to go through before she was _sure_ it would work. But this time? This time she was ready. She'd burned her journal just to make sure her parents didn't find it. She'd purged her computer of the files and deleted the posts on her social media.

All she had to do was wait for the site to come up, turn on her webcam as a recording, and she was _golden._

This was it. She'd thought about it for years. When she'd gone into high school, she'd thought the name was a sign. Casper High - how was that _not_ a sign?

11:55. It was almost time. She logged on and turned on her webcam in preparation, then found the bathrobe tie she'd be using for this purpose. She folded the tie in half, pulled it around her neck, and slipped the loose ends through the loop that made.

11:59. She clicked through the site until she found the 'connect webcam - streaming' button. A moment later, a popup in the lower right corner of her screen said, "Connection established."

Now or never. She angled the computer so it would capture her final moments, unable to break the longing for someone to finally see her. _Really_ see her, not just as the chick with the bad back, not as the smartass, not as the clumsy kid who couldn't understand recorded sound. See her as she was, not as she should be.

She tied the free ends around the rod in her closet and let go. The pressure around her throat felt good, even though it was constricting. She shuffled her legs so she'd fall forward instead of back - no loosening after losing consciousness for her - and waited out the burn in her lungs.

It took under a minute for the burn to begin to feel good, and maybe thirty seconds after that for the high to kick in. Then it went black, and the last thing she saw was the white light of her webcam dutifully recording her final moments.

She smiled.

Her body was found two hours later, after Garcia found the link still running and notified Hotch, who told the local sheriff, who sent out uniforms. Ten minutes later, the coroner was sent.

Hers was the only smile to be seen on the jet, where they watched the last minute of her life. "Should we tell the parents?" Reid asked at last, pausing the video so they could see the last expression the young woman had ever formed.

"No," Morgan said after a brief hesitation. "Let them go on thinking she was just a stupid teenager. No need to dig that wound deeper."

JJ just looked out the window and fiddled with her sister's necklace.


End file.
